The Plague Dogs (52 page)

After prolonged and careful consideration, I have concluded that we should also part with Scientific Officer Class II, Mr. Stephen Powell. Mr. Powell has been with the station since early this year and has shown himself capable of honest work of an average standard. While he certainly cannot be said to be a liability, at the same time his capacity is in no way outstanding. On at least one occasion he has allowed himself to express inappropriately emotional feelings about a proposed experimental project, although in fairness one should add that this was shortly after he had been ill with influenza.

More disturbingly, he has displayed unsound judgement in handling an unexpected crisis, and on his own admission spent working time drinking with a newspaper reporter in a public house while returning from an official errand (which he would have done better not to have undertaken at all) on behalf of the station. It is possible—and I wish to emphasise that it is no more than a possibility—that he may on that occasion have been guilty of a breach of security. This is a matter which I would in the normal way have pursued with him, but since it came to light only recently, it seems better to leave it over, pending the decision on his proposed dismissal. What is indisputable is that an embarrassing breach of security occurred, and that shortly before it occurred Mr. Powell was drinking in a pub with the newspaper reporter who was responsible for it. I am, of course, ready to discuss further if desired. I wish to stress that in the normal way no question of Mr. Powell's dismissal would arise. Both as a man and as a scientist he is somewhat immature, but capable of acceptable work. However, his ability is in no way outstanding, his "copybook" is not entirely "unblotted," and you have said that we are positively required to recommend staff reductions at the level of scientific officers of his class. He is unestablished (by a few weeks) and can therefore be transferred or dismissed (412) f: without raising any serious establishment problem. In a word, he is expendable.

I should find it difficult, even in the state of play envisaged:;or the future, to recommend further staff reductions. It is, of course, as I realise, a case of seeing how little we can get away with.

May I conclude, however, by saying that I will be very ready to go over the ground, as far as my section is. concerned, at the Heads of Section conference convened for 2:30 p.m. tomorrow.

(Signed) J. R. Boycott

Friday the 26th November

In the darkness of the early small-hours, Digby Driver lay sleeping the sleep of the unjust, his dreams flickering upwards from the incongruously honest, but cryptic and therefore unheeded, caves of the unconscious like marsh-I gas rising through the ooze of a bog. Images and even I phrases capered within his sleeping skull like lambent, I phosphorescent corkscrews. Miss Mandy Pryce-Morgan—an animal given to him (or to somebody) for his pleasure—clad in a gown of transparent airline tickets and a bullfighter’s red cape, was reading to him from a [silver Amounted] copy of the London Orator.

"POLITICIAN CHEWS WRITER'S MEMORY ON FELL," read Miss Pryce-Morgan.

"SCUBA DIVERS PROBE TARN IN BID TO I ESTABLISH DOGS' INNOCENCE."

"Poet Wordsworth, celebrated Lakeland sheep, got a shock yesterday." She paused.

"The reason?" moaned Digby Driver automatically, "tossing and turning where he lay.

"He found one of his odes had been chewed up by Mr.

Basil Forbes, the Parliamentary Secretary. Mr. Forbes, in 'an exclusive press statement to the Orator, said 'I ode him [nothing. Anyone alleging otherwise is up the Walpole. In f any event, Mrs. Ann Moss has now sold herself to Animal Research for experimental purposes, and a dog has bitten the Secretary of State. Cet animal est tres mechant. Quand on I' attaque, it se defend."

It is learned from an official source in Gainesville, Florida, that Mr. Greg Shark, the well-known scuba-diver, is to descend into the day before yesterday in an attempt to discover the Plague Dogs'

whereabouts. Mr. Shark, interviewed at a depth of two atmospheres in fresh water— "That rings a bell," muttered Driver, half-awake. "Rings a bell. I can almost—almost hear—" He opened his eyes and sat up sharply. A bell was ringing—a real bell. A moment more and his awakened faculties, closing over the dream like mud over a flung stone, had recognised it as the telephone. He got out of bed and picked up the receiver. "Driver Orator."

"It's Quilliam, Kevin."

"Who?"

"Quilliam—Skillicorn. Got it? Come on, dear boy, come on! You were asleep, I suppose?" (Mr.

Skillicorn did not, of course, run to an apology.) "Of course I—yeah—yeah, I was actually. Nice to hear you, Quilliam. Where are you, in the office?"

"No, I'm down at Sir Ivor's. Tony Hogpenny's here too. We've been having a talk with Sir Ivor about a lot of things, including this dogs business. Haven't been to bed yet, actually." (So that's the explanation of the malicious glee in the bastard's voice, thought Driver, shivering.) He said nothing and waited.

"Well, look, anyway—Sir Ivor thinks you've done very well on the dogs job. Are we right in thinking that it can't possibly go on much longer? They're bound to be killed within a couple of days at most, aren't they?"

"Yeah, bound to be. Well, I mean, there's two companies of paratroops after 'em, isn't there?"

(Digby Driver, like far too many otherwise quite sensible people, habitually used the term

"paratroops.") "They'll be shot to bits—I couldn't alter that with a million bloody pounds, and nor could anyone else."

"Yes, Kevin, I know that all right, but this is the point. Sir Ivor thinks you've done very very well, and you may like to know that it's rumoured that Basil Forbes is re-(4J4) signing—there's glory for you! But the thing is, before we switch the story off and put you on to child prostitution in the Home Counties yum yum, he thinks there might be a chance to discredit Harbottle by some means.

Harbottle's coming up your way tonight, you know, Von purpose to be in at the death. The death can't possibly; be averted, can it? Because if it could, Sir Ivor says we'd; back you with everything, to make Harbottle look a fool—"

"Oh, have a heart, Quilliam! You know there's not a hope in hell—"

"All right, all right, dear boy, keep it cool! Well, now, look, next best thing. Can you watch out for a chance to show Harbottle in a bad light? You know, bullet-riddled dog screaming in agony and Harbottle grinning, or something? The public wouldn't dig that, however much they've been upset by the Westcott business. If you could manage it, Sir Ivor would be enormously pleased. Just do your best, laddie. I'll have to go now. Good luck, my boy!" Click.

"O my God!" said Driver, banging down the dead receiver and turning to stare out of the window at the moonlit fell. "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the bloody world, eh?

Who'd be a reporter?" . He made a cup of tea and then, thoroughly depressed, dialled the London number of the young woman who had R played the part of Chubby Cherub in Out for the Count. j?

(Digby Driver was currently "between girls.") If Susie I" was in a good temper, and in her bed, and if there did not . happen to be anyone else in it, perhaps she might chat l with him for a bit. No man is an island, and it was only H by force of circumstance that Digby Driver was continent.

"Soldiers aal ower bluidy fell," said Dennis Williamson, "chasin' hither and yon and frittenin'

yows to booggery, tha knaws.

Newspaper chaps bangin' on't door hafe th' day, an' folk in cars drivin' oop an' down t' lonnin, op-H. penin'' gates and crooshin' wire fences when they reverse. J Ah reckon forty pounds' worth o'

damage. Ah'll tell thee, Bob, theer's soomone's goin' to get a bang from me best fore this lot's doon with."

"Ay, an' yon helicopter scar in' cows—they've all been gallopin' oop an' down field fit to bust theirselves. An' theer's joost nowt ye can do, owd lad, so ye can set yeself down and thank your stars as theer's political chaps to stand oop for British farmer."

"Theer were soldier fella saw one of my dogs ont' fell, tha knaws, Bob, when Ah were tryin' to get yows down out o't waay. Dog were oop top o' Blaake Rigg an' I were down below, like, an' this basstard took a shot at it an' missed."

"Oh, 'ell!" said Robert.

"Ay, that's about soom of what Ah said an' all. He only took the one."

"Ah'll tell thee what," said Robert. "We've joost got bluidy noothing out of this lot, owd lad.

Science chaps an' newspaper chaps an' political chaps— they've alfbeen joost pain int' neck. Dogs have doon no harm at alf compared with them, that's about it. Ah wouldn't mind seein' dogs get clean awaay, would you?"

"Well, that's one thing ye'll not see, Bob," said Dennis. "The booggers have got no more channce nowthan tick in a sheep-dip, tha knaws."

He nodded grimly and drove on down the valley, while Robert went to drive the cows into the cowshed to be out of the way of the helicopter.

Thursday the 25th November to Friday the 26th November

The assurances given by the Secretary of State in the House had been as effective as he had intended.

There could be no possible doubt in the minds of the vast majority—if not of all—the newspaper-reading public that the drama of the Plague Dogs was now hastening—rushing—to its catastrophe. The sagacious power of hounds and death drew closer every hour. Certainly the dogs seemed to have vanished from the vicinity of the Dow Crag, and since the discovery of Westcott's body no one reported seeing them elsewhere. Obviously, however, could not be long before one or the other of the patrol-helicopters spotted them, or else, as heretofore, some orist or farmer would encounter them on one of their turnal forays. Once their approximate whereabouts known the soldiers would close in and that would be I that. Like the journeyings of King Charles after Naseby, dogs' movements had become, though they might not themselves be aware of it, those of hunted fugitives. Their ith was now a foregone conclusion—indeed, an anti-Climax—and public interest was, if anything, on the wane.

Where did they wander that night, when they left the fields of Long House in the Tarn Beck valley of Dunner-dale, soon after Hot Bottle Bill had uttered his winged words to the Commons and the airborne soldiers had been moving into billets at Coniston?

They went southward, wading into a wind that bore the smells of salt, sheep and seaweed, the only communication reaching them out all the encompassing miles of darkness. A cold rain lad begun to fall, and before they passed above Seath-church and rounded the Newfield this had become a heavy downpour, so that Rowf, jibbing at the roaring, riling beck beyond the old school-house, turned down-ream along its right bank, following it to where it runs ider the Ulpha road. Slinking down that long, exposed [ad] in almost pitch blackness, they sought what shelter they could from the flanking stone waits; and in a mile, cold and clemmed with hunger, to Hall Dunnerdale.

But here Robert Lindsay's dogs began to bark, and on went once more until they reached the Duddon bridge Phyllis Dawson's. They could see almost nothing and smell of the rain weakened all smells else, so that they not recognise the scene of Snitter's escape from Mr. Powell and the inside of his own head. But indeed, they were now oppressed by a sense of hopelessness and dread [iraich], as it continued during hour after hour of the stormy light, weighed upon them more heavily than their own sodden coats, so that for much of the time they were conscious of little but the wind and rain. Not one car met overtook them all night, yet they did not stop or look for shelter. The continuous sound of flowing water, from the chattering rills along the verges under his paws to the distant commotion of the Duddon, troubled Rowf like an evil dream of fear and suffering revived, while to Snitter it seemed that the wind carried grim echoes—heavy, hound-like panting and far-off squeals of desperation and death.

Not until dawn began to reveal, little by little, the dull shine of the sodden grass and the tugging of the bushes in the wind, did they rest at last for a time, behind Jenkinson's tombstone opposite the door of Ulpha church, from the pelting of the pitiless storm.

It will have been about an hour later that their bedraggled forms were seen, lurking at the bottom of his garden, by Roy Greenwood, former Himalayan mountaineer and Outward Bound instructor, the vicar of Ulpha-with-Seathwaite. Roy, as was his practice, had got up in the dark of the winter's morning to pray for two hours before breakfast and a full day's work; and as he knelt in intercession for the sins and grief of the world and the misery of its countless victims, human and animal, he caught sight, through the window, of two furtive shapes beneath the bare ash trees, where Japanese-faced tomtits swung on a bone suspended from a branch and brown, seatrout-harbouring Duddon overflowed its banks below.

Roy knew little or nothing of the Plague Dogs, for he could not afford the London Orator and had in any case more urgent and important things to do than read it—such as visiting the sick, lonely and afflicted, or giving one or other of the local fanners a hand out with yows. He had, indeed, vaguely heard some local talk, but this did not now return to mind. He could see that the dogs were famished and in distress, so he went outside and tried to get them to come to him, but they would not. Then—

having precious little else to give them—he went in and got the greater part of what had been going to be his own breakfast, together with all he could find edible among the scraps (which was not much).

This he put outside and, since he still could not induce the dogs to approach, went back indoors. When, an hour and a half later, he set out for Seathwaite, largely breakfastless, the food was gone and so were the dogs. [This (it is interesting now to record).]

Hotter Fell was the last person to have any real contact with the dogs before the end and the only person, apart from Mr. Ephraim and Vera Dawson, who showed them any kindness throughout the time that they were at large. Exactly where they spent that stormy Friday, while the sodden, cursing soldiers searched for them from Walna Scar to the Grey Friar and over to Wreynus Pass, is uncertain and perhaps not really important. But during some of the daylight hours—those of the afternoon, perhaps—they must have crossed, unseen by anyone in the dismal weather, the deserted wastes of Ulpha Fell and Birker Moor, and so come down into Eskdale. Probably they went almost as far north as Harter Fell and then down by Kepple Crag, crossing the swollen Esk by the bridge near Penny Hill, for Rowf would hardly have faced the thunder of Dalegarth Force, or even Birker Fofce in spate after twenty hours' continuous rain.